Even in Hollywood, film giants don’t often come much bigger than pint-sized Danny De Vito.

Not with credits from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Pulp Fiction to Throw Momma From the Train, Matilda and Twins.

So it was with open arms that Birmingham’s Cineworld Broad Street cinema welcomed the legendary actor, director and producer from New Jersey when he arrived on the orange carpet for the premiere of Dr Seuss’ The Lorax.

Already the highest grossing US hit of De Vito’s career, the family-friendly animation aimed at younger viewers might not have been the best movie of the year.

It wasn’t even the best animation thanks to the likes of A Monster In Paris and Brave.

But it was the certainly the most colourful.

And, as the Sunday lunchtime sunshine roasted the crowd of fans it was as if Bishopsgate Street had become the Sunset Strip.

Back in June, another colourful visitor to Cineworld was British comedy star Keith Lemon.

Touring the country in appalling weather via helicopter, he arrived later than planned but more than made up for it – by squeezing my lemons and throwing himself on to the floor with popcorn.

If only his film, released in late August, had been as memorable.

Two big premieres stood out.

The Dark Knight Rises was held at Empire Great Park on July 18, only to be overshadowed within hours by the cinema massacre in Colorado where 12 cinema-goers were shot dead by a gunman, prompting the cancellation of the film’s European premiere in Paris.

Back at Cineworld, Skyfall premiered on October 25, the day before the new 007 film would be launched on its way to becoming the highest grossing movie in British box office history.

With newly-hiked prices such as £11.90 for IMAX and £15.80 at Vue Star City Gold Class, the UK’s first £100 million film was always going to happen sooner rather than later.

The Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Coun John Lines, was a special guest at the Skyfall premiere so that he could simultaneously help to open Cineworld’s new £1 million IMAX screen in the old Screen 6.

On the other side of Five Ways, the Office of Fair Trading had already rubber-stamped Odeon’s sudden desire to take over the former 12-screen AMC cinema.

After the deal went through at the end of August without being referred to the Competition Commission, Odeon opened its new ISENSE screen on the day Skyfall was released.

Danny De Vito arrives at the premier of The Lorax at Cineworld in Broad Street.

The first screen of its kind in the country, it promises to deliver a new kind of surround sound once The Impossible opens there on New Year’s Day as the first fully-formatted release (Skyfall only used a third of the channels).

Down at Millennium Point, 2012 was the first full year for The Giant Screen Cinema. This had opened in October 2011 with Spielberg’s Tintin, following the ending of the site’s ten-year association with IMAX in September.

The Giant Screen’s top three hits this year were The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall and The Hobbit, which collectively helped attendances to rise by 20 per cent year on year.

With extra films now available to screen – including the glorious 50th anniversary re-release of the digitally-enhanced Lawrence of Arabia, which no modern film is ever likely to match for spectacle – the future looks rosy.

The Electric Cinema (1909) had a brilliant year, with Skyfall selling out screening after screening at what is the UK’s oldest working picture house.

Owner Tom Lawes even had a hit with his own release, a documentary called The Last Projectionist which starred city projectionists.

Radio Five Live’s Mark Kermode made it his film of the week in June saying: “It ends on a very positive note which is ‘There is a future’. And the future is that people who care about and love and live and breathe cinema will still offer a service that people will still want.”

In the late autumn, I investigated the 1930 opening of the first Odeon Cinema in Birmingham.

During the rest of the Depression-hit decade and until his premature death in 1941 aged just 48, Balsall Heath-born entrepreneur Oscar Deutsch somehow built up what is still Europe’s largest cinema chain.

In an exclusive interview, son Ronnie Deutsch, aged 92, remembered being at the opening of the building which has become the Royal Banqueting Suite on Birchfield Road, Perry Barr.

Earlier this month, I received an astonishing picture of Dudley-born James Whale in theatrical mode when he was being held inside a German prisoner of war camp in 1918. From there, he ended up making Frankenstein, in Hollywood, just 13 years later.

So this year’s top tens are published in memory of Midland pioneers James Whale, Oscar Deutsch and J. R. R. Tolkien... three trailblazers who helped to make modern entertainment what it is today.

Indeed, I saw the first UK cinema screening of The Hobbit at London’s Leicester Square Odeon. When Deutsch opened that building 75 years ago on November 2, 1937, it was just 42 days after fellow former Birmingham schoolboy J. R. R. Tolkien’s debut novel The Hobbit had been published on September 21 that year.

I’ve selected something for everyone in this year’s top ten: Skyfall – the irresistible 007 movie; Amour – a haunting look at true love in the minds of two 80-year-olds, one of whom has fallen ill; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – a film that knew its older target audience and went for it; Argo – the continued renaissance of Ben Affleck; The Hobbit – conceived (like Jack Reacher) by a former Birmingham King Edward’s schoolboy; Margin Call – an overlooked analysis of greed; Martha Marcy May Marlene – the brilliant big time debut of Elizabeth Olsen; The Dark Knight Rises – full-powered Batman; Brave – the children’s film of 2012; and The Imposter – an utterly compelling documentary about a fraudster.

It would also be remiss not to remember the contribution of the late Pete Walsh to the city’s Arts Lab and Triangle Cinema prior to spending 18 years at the Irish Film Centre. He died aged 62 on December 7, having managed to slip out of his hospice to see Skyfall (loathed it) and The Master (loved it!).

In his place, young city-based directors such as Steve Rainbow (N.F.A.), Pip Piper (Last Shop Standing), Mark Pressdee (Titanic Love) and Michael B Clifford (Turbulence) are now blazing their own trails across Birmingham from where 19th century scientist Alexander Parkes helped to create the material which led to the production of celluloid...